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Unfortunately, America is already so saturated with guns that it would take the type of extreme confiscatory regulation imagined by wingnuts but impossible in real life to make much of a difference. That does not, of course, mean we shouldn’t try.

There’s been at least one recent gun control measure passed — the House of Representatives has voted to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from buying ammunition. Based, of course, on the wingnut notion that it’ll be used to round up God-fearin’ gun owners and heard them into FEMA camps.

What sort of gun control laws would be a good idea to pass to ‘control’ this sort of situation?

Especially in the context that:

1) Democrats would have to push for such a bill

2) Millions of red-neck Republicans flock to the polls every year as one-issue voters and that issue is gun control. They help Karl Rove elect wing nuts who think global warming is impossible because God says so.

3) The Supreme Court has ruled that people have a constitutional right to own and use guns

What sort of gun control laws would be a good idea to pass to ‘control’ this sort of situation?

Require gun safety rules be followed, with infractions like this making the owner of the uncontrolled gun liable for involuntary manslaughter through their incompetence and negligence. With the kid being able to grab and fire the weapon as prima facie evidence for the lapse of gun safety by the gun owner.

Shit, this kind of thing happens all the time. Are you not reading the gun fail series at Daily Kos?

If someone asks why no responsible gun owner stopped the mass shooting in Santa Monica, its apparently because they’re all at home putting rounds in the bodies of people next door because they don’t know how to clean the things.

It seems we have more of these incidents per capita than other countries. It’s the culture, not the guns, and a powerful lot of dumbasses still get guns. I agree with Nerd of Redhead: the gun owner was an idiot and should be charged with negligence.

I agree completely. The guns are not to blame. That’s why, whenever we talk about gun control, we actually mean controlling the access of the people—who are the ones with the blame-worthy culture—to the guns. The guns can still do what they want. It’s the people—the ones with the blame-worthy culture—who need to have their actions regulated.

Also, if it is the culture that is to blame: you know, the thing that whispers “guns, fap, guns, erection, guns, bang, guns, power, guns, splooge, gimme more fucking guns!” into the ears of the 4-year-old above, doesn’t shooting that culture right in its fucking face have to involve starving it of its fetish, at least a little bit?

If a pistol/rifle/shotgun is out arm’s reach, then it is not very useful for self-defense.

What is missing from this bit of sloganism, is that a loaded gun should never be out the control of the person who is the owner of said gun. Gun safety requires that no loaded firearms are just “laying around”, not under the direct control of responsible person.

It must be dangerous, living in US, with all those criminals roaming the streets and murdering people right and left in broad daylight. The only way for an honest American to survive is to be always prepared for a fight until death.

I’m sure Americans know this stuff already but it shocks me that this is how things happen. I was visiting a relative who’s a nice ordinary American. Soon I found out he had four (4!) guns. He’s not a maniac, so here’s how it happened: one was inherited from his father, it came to join the one he bought himself before his father’s death. There’s an old Colt, an antique which I think came from his Grandad. There’s a nasty modern thing, a Glock, I think, that was bought by his partner’s previous husband ‘to protect himself…’ from whatever… That’s a lot of guns for an ordinary nice guy but what’s he supposed to do with them all?

In my naivety, I asked him where he kept all these dangerous weapons. It kind of freaked me out that these taboo objects could be somewhere in the house, like you would feel if someone told you they were hoarding radioactive waste. He said he wasn’t telling me. I only later realised that’s on the responsible gun-owner’s list of rules (which is quite long). One more damn set of things to be responsible about! Not only that, but if I were evil, mentally ill or suicidal, I bet I could find them if I really wanted.

And another thing – I got him to take me out in his field to shoot laundry detergent bottles so I could have a Real American Experience TM. But it so happened that just before we went out, I got some news that disturbed and upset me. So I was very, very aware when I was out there with this dangerous object in my hands that I was not really mentally competent to be operating it. And that’s something that happens all the time to lots of people, gun-owners included.

What is missing from this bit of sloganism, is that a loaded gun should never be out the control of the person who is the owner of said gun. Gun safety requires that no loaded firearms are just “laying around”, not under the direct control of responsible person.

Exactly.

There are too many idiots out there (and I’d wager that the homeowner in the OP was one of them) who leave loaded firearms lying around “just in case” (presumably they have visions of diving for the loaded gun in the bookcase if someone storms the building).

There are combination gun safes that will hold a loaded firearm (including shotguns/rifles) safely (they either contain the entire gun or lock the gun to a wall and prevent access to the trigger) but still allow the owner access in seconds, all other firearms should be locked up – that said, apparently DC vs Heller actually held that mandating people lock up or disable all firearms was unconstitutional.

The owner of the firearm in the original example should be up on charges (and would be if they were in California where it’s illegal to leave a firearm where it can be accessed by a minor.)

Speaking of California, CNN is reporting that the shooter yesterday had a documented history of mental illness, which should rule out the idea that the guns used were his (unlike the rest of the country, California does it’s own background checks and includes mental health records).

I’m sure Americans know this stuff already but it shocks me that this is how things happen. I was visiting a relative who’s a nice ordinary American. Soon I found out he had four (4!) guns.

Depending on what the guns are used for, it’s not uncommon to own multiple firearms – for example, I own a double barreled shotgun for skeet shooting and a precision rifle for target practice, neither gun is suitable for the use the other is employed for.

What I do find weird are the guys who own half a dozen of a particular type of gun, I know a guy who owns 7 or 8 variants of the 1911 alone, but then again I find people who collect commemorative plates pretty weird too.

Nerd of Redhead,
I wasn’t trying to engage in sloganism. I may not have unpacked the idea sufficiently, but, my intent was to make the same point as you. There should be no unsecured firearms in a residence. A gun left in the nightstand when no one is home is loot for a burglar; not protection against one. I believe most people use “readiness” as an excuse for laziness. Instead of going through the “bother” of locking away their weapon(s), they pretend that ready access equals better protection.

Beatrice,
Burglaries do sometimes happen when the owner is at home. And, I can’t say that being responsibly and safely prepared for that contingency is a bad idea. However, the amount of “constant vigilance!!!” relative to the likely danger tends to be excessive and irrational.

I visited an Army retiree decades ago who warned me before entering his house that there were several guns in the house, and they were all loaded. I replied that all guns are presumed loaded until I personally verified they weren’t. He said “Ah, you understand.” Essentially every horizontal surface had a pistol of some sort on it! And he had “several” rifles, too…up to a 25mm Finnish anti-tank rifle that had a cartridge about the size of a banana.

One of my neighbors has posted on Facebook several times about her desire to own a gun. She even has a pretty pink model picked out.

We live in a fairly safe neighborhood. There are occasional burglaries, sometimes from unoccupied homes, mostly from garages and sheds. Most of the crimes are thefts of bicycles, tools, and plants. (Yes, we have plant rustlers who, after dark, dig up shrubs and flowering plants, presumably to do some landscaping.) The last time I recall a home invasion type burglary was maybe 30 years ago.

I don’t know if my neighbor is really worried about crime. I suspect she’s getting ready to fight Obama’s minions when they try to take away her freedoms.

And, I can’t say that being responsibly and safely prepared for that contingency is a bad idea.

The trouble is, I don’t consider having multiple loaded unsecured weapons in one’s home responsible or safe.
And if they are stored in a way that I would consider responsible and safe, then they wouldn’t be much use when a Big Bad suddenly bursts into your house.

So really, I can’t think of a way guns in one’s home can at the same time be safe and useful for self defense from violent attackers.
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These conversations always remind me of Moore’s short cartoon that was part of Bowling for Columbine. It’s baffling that a whole nation can collectively be so afraid all the time.

And how I wish I could write that with irony, or even cynicism, intended, instead of angry sadness. “Conservative” ‘Mer’kins – to make a wild guess at the unlisted politics of this idiot – are just fucked-up people, however ‘nice’ in other ways.

Look, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. If you bleeding heart liberals ban guns, 4 year-olds like this, instead of “somehow finding a gun in the home’s living room” and accidentally shooting their father with it, will just “somehow find a knife in the home’s living room and accidentally stab their father in the heart with it, or “somehow find a board with a nail in it in the home’s living room” and accidentally savagely beat their father to death with it. You might as well ban toothbrushes, since any clever 4-year old can heat one with a smuggled bic lighter and melt the bristles into a hard sharp stabbing weapon, then shank mom in the neck while she’s drawing a nice warm bath. I think the real answers are 1) stronger mandatory sentences for 4-year old felons, and 2) laws allowing parents to shoot children who wield toothbrushes in a threatening or cranky manner.

Most of the above has been discussing GUN SAFETY RULES. You know, the rules that make owning, carrying, and using a gun safe for you and those around you. Why aren’t you complaining about the lack of responsible gun ownship by the owner of the gun which was used to kill a man. Only then, can you talk intelligently on the subject. You avoid your sloganeering, and actually deal with reality.

“somehow find a board with a nail in it in the home’s living room” and accidentally savagely beat their father to death with it

I think the inability to see the obvious snark here is not so much a confirmation of Poe’s Law as it is evidence that many Pharyngulites reflexively take things overly-seriously before stopping to consider what an individual is really trying to say.

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See, the real problem here is lack of guns; due to activist judges, gay marriage and the recent invention of jalapeno cappucino cool ranch-flavored dorito frozen yogurt, I have no doubt that local laws were probably passed which made the father self conscious about buying too many guns at once, threatening his manhood and causing him to insufficiently arm himself against his son’s murderous onslaught. Thanks to Obama, Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank and Stephen Hawking, this good man was stripped of his constitutional right to make up for his subnormal-sized genitalia by openly purchasing the kind of artillery needed to take out a 4 year-old before the tot can get close enough to detonate his suicide vest.
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Cover your far-left eye, read the above paragraph, and let me know when you see the snark.

Successful satire relies on a shared understanding between the satirist and the audience.

Now that you mention it, I do see how that would sail right over the heads of people who come from cultures where it’s possible for a 4 year-old to use a bic lighter to make a prison weapon out of a toothbrush and murder his mother, or use a board with a nail in it to savagely beat her father to death. I apologize for my (wholly inadvertent) Americaucasiandrocentricism.

I do see how that would sail right over the heads of people who come from cultures where it’s possible for a 4 year-old to use a bic lighter to make a prison weapon out of a toothbrush and murder his mother

no.. but even YOU come from a culture where someone would say something like that and NOT mean it satirically.

I do see how that would sail right over the heads of people who come from cultures where it’s possible for a 4 year-old to use a bic lighter to make a prison weapon out of a toothbrush and murder his mother

Ichthyic:

no.. but even YOU come from a culture where someone would say something like that and NOT mean it satirically.

I’m with Ichthyic. It’s not that the point sails over our collective heads, it’s that it’s entirely possible that you meant to say that the problem is the four-year old, not the gun, no matter how ridiculously you made your point. You are asking people from thousands of kilometres away to read your mind. Sorry, I can’t do that. I was hoping that you were being snarky, but I had no way of being sure about that.

The fact that you took my very unpointed comment in a snarky way isn’t a sign of you acting in good faith.

I think the “accidentally savagely beat his father to death” with a board with a nail just happening to be lying around the living room was a strong clue. Thing is, one has to get past the opening to get there, which, when we have real gun nuts* coming by regularly on these threads, can be a tough ask.

*acceptable usage or not? if not, what is the preferred alternative, and please don’t say “enthusiasts”

I think people jumped on Phineas because they reacted before reading the entire comment. It happens.

Several people have brought up the issue of a burglar breaking in when they’re at home. That never happens. If there’s someone home it’s robbery, not burglary. [/pedantry]

It’s pretty well understood that if a small child finds a gun lying around, he’ll pick it up and shoot it (male pronoun used because I’m surer of boys than girls). Guns are designed to be easy to use, unlike computers, but small children can use those too!

Funny, I was just in a discussion about gun control with a couple of guys I know. Both of them were convinced that we need MORE GUNS to protect ourselves from the left-wing government that’s going to tyrannically impose affordable health care and legalized gay marriage on us. Because SECOND AMENDMENT!!! We needs our FULLY AUTOMATIC ASSAULT WEAPONS!!! GONNA have to OVERTHROW the TYRANTS!!! And then there was something about how the military wouldn’t try to stop them, and that’s how they wouldn’t be instantly annihilated by drone strikes or tanks, but then there was the part of the military that would follow orders unconditionally and that was why they needed to legally own light machine guns and shoulder-fired rocket launchers (no, I am not making that up), then something else that I think involved testosterone poisoning.

I probably should have made some sort of note so that ten or twenty years from now when they become the next Ruby Ridge or Branch Davidians I have proof that I called it.

I’m sure that both of them are on one of the right-wing tea party circle-jerk sites reading about this shooting and talking about how it’s all part of the big conspiracy.

By culture I mean there is something in the American psyche that seems to lend itself to violence. I’ve gone hunting and haveveven fired a submachine gun, but I don’t own a gun, don’t care to, and have a hard time understanding how anyone can leave one lying around the house.

It’s pretty well understood that if a small child finds a gun lying around, he’ll pick it up and shoot it (male pronoun used because I’m surer of boys than girls). Guns are designed to be easy to use, unlike computers, but small children can use those too!

I would imagine that boys would be more likely to at least understand what a trigger does simply because they tend to play with cap guns and other proxy firearms.

If the gun had been left without a round chambered I’m doubting that the kid would have figured out how to rack the slide or even have the coordination and muscle strength to do so – my USPSA spec (target) handgun has an absolute bastard of a recoil spring – but of course, nobody who is serious about home defense leaves a gun without a round chambered, otherwise how can you possibly be expected to shoot an armed intruder whilst diving behind the coffee table?

(not that I’m saying that just leaving the gun without a round in the chamber is perfectly safe, as I’ve already stated, if you’re going to have loaded guns around the house, they’d better be in a gun vault or something similar).

By culture I mean there is something in the American psyche that seems to lend itself to violence. I’ve gone hunting and have even fired a submachine gun, but I don’t own a gun, don’t care to, and have a hard time understanding how anyone can leave one lying around the house.

I don’t know that violence is uniquely American, but guns have a certain mythos about them that isn’t present in most European countries (for example), people here seem to want to settle the scores with firearms and unfortunately the widespread availability of them allows a great number of them to do so.

I’m British, so I’m used to a culture where people don’t glorify firearms (and those who do were generally considered “a bit weird”), they were almost exclusively recreational or functional items, used either for target shooting or groundskeeping – the UK never really had a problem with gun violence even when you could buy “assault weapons” there, but there was still the occasional mass shooting.

If you look at European countries that still allow people a fair amount of flexibility in firearms ownership you’ll see that the only legitimate reasons for owning a gun are target shooting (which I enjoy) and hunting (which I have no interest in) – this is why, unusually, whilst most European countries allow people to own things like AR-15s (or weapons functionally identical to AR-15s) they STRICTLY regulate the ownership of handguns – for some reason the US seems to take exactly the opposite stance.

“Self defense” (either from people or, more laughably, from the government) is almost never considered a valid reason for owning a gun in most countries, but in the US, it’s given paramount importance, so much so that they codified it in their principal governing document.

That said, I completely support anyone’s right to own any firearm they like (provided they’ve met sufficient training requirements) but I think the idea of owning them to overthrow the government is positively delusional.

Seriously, you can get a gun lock for as little as 6.00 at name brand stores. It’s not expensive at all.
You can also get a nice fast access storage box for cheap — about 190.00 — less than the cost of a tax stamp for a suppressor !
The guy who left a gun laying around where a 4 year old can get his hands on it deserves to be jailed.
Preferably for felony manslaughter/negligent homicide. http://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01102.htm

Firing a gun isn’t just a matter of picking it up and pulling the trigger. The kid had to have been playing around with it for a good long time before he managed to pull the trigger.

If the gun is loaded, a round is in the chamber, the hammer is back, and the safety is off, it takes little effort for a toddler to fire it. And if the barrel just happens to be pointed toward someone when the gun goes off, chances are somebody is going to get hit.

A friend of mine always had a loaded gun, cocked and safety off, on the table next to his bed. He didn’t have any kids and he lived alone. However, I always gave him a hard time that he was eventually going to off himself reaching for the alarm clock in the morning. Needless to say, when my friends and I went to the local quarry to go target shooting, we didn’t take him. This guy was dangerous. The rest of us got pretty nervous whenever our ammunition got anywhere near our guns.

I’m not an american, but I live here. If you want to regulate american firearms, may I suggest the
Way Back Machine? It’ll take you back to the year before the advent of semi-automatic weapons. That’s what you need. Gun control in the U.S. now is closing the barn door after the exit of the horses. The gun’s are out there. Any attempt to control them will only hurt “the good guys”. Even famed fuckwit Bill Maher
acknowledges the need for legal ownership of guns in a a gun country. Listen up yanks, numbers don’t lie: More guns in the hands of responsible citizens= LESS VIOLENT CRIME. Thank you, and fuck you.